3 techniques to transition from newbie to intermediate meditator

Video Transcript

Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org, and in this episode I’m going to talk about how to meditate deeper. I really consider this episode here like a part two to my original episode, called “How to meditate”, which is really popular. A lot of people have gotten a lot of value from that one there. Because it’s a no-bullshit guide to meditation.

What we’re going to do here, though, is — I want to go a little bit deeper into some of the various techniques that you can do with your meditations. And I’m going to give you three phases or stages of meditation that I’ve personally been working on myself. To take you, basically, from the very beginning newbie phases of meditation — the first stage, where you’re just clueless about what to do or how meditation works.

So, we’re going to have smoothly transition from that into deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and more advanced stages of meditation. Until, ultimately, you can get to some really cool, advanced places. So, I want to guide you through that.

Also, I want to cover some of the common problems that people have when they’re meditating. So, what are the greatest pitfalls for mediators. And I’m going to give you a little quick schedule, that you can use for how to meditate, alright? So, here we go.

Simple Observation

Stage number one. And I’m kind of assuming that you watched my first video here, right? So, I’m not going to be talking about all the basics of meditation. I assume that you understand how the basics work. So, if you do understand that, then here’s stage one.

This is where you would begin meditation if you’ve never meditated before. Or even if you have meditated before, but you haven’t been doing it very strictly and you feel like you’re not getting good results with it. You can just start here at stage one. It never hurts to re-learn the basics.

And this one is the easy version, and it’s called — simple observation. So, here’s how it works. You sit down. You can have your eyes either open or closed. But you sit down in meditative-like posture. And then what you do is, you just allow everything to happen. And all you do is just watch it. You simply observe it.

So, whatever’s going on becomes ok, and you’re not trying to control any of it. So, what will happen? Well, when you sit down, and let’s say, you close your eyes, and you’re sitting there, what will happen is: thoughts will come up, and various feelings and sensations will come up. Emotions will come up.

Generally, a lot times, what we do is we try to control that. And we try to either focus our mind on not thinking anything, or we try to focus our mind on some specific objective or goal within meditation. And that’s one form of meditation which is cool. Remember, there are many, many, many valid forms of meditation. So I’m not telling you that this is the only way, or that these three ways are going to be the only ways that you should meditate.

No, what I recommend is that you try a slew of different meditation techniques. Which is what I’m hoping you’ll do here. So, what you’re doing is — you’re letting your mind do whatever it wants to do without controlling it. And all your job is — is just to watch.

Your mind will wander. Let it wander. Let it think about tomorrow night. And let it think about the email you just got. And let it think about what your wife thinks about you. Or the fight that you just got in with your husband. Let it think about all that stuff.

Let it wander to scary places, dirty places, silly places. Whatever kind of places it wants to go to — let it go there. But, as it goes there, your job is to watch it go there, and just be mindful of the fact that: “Oh, it’s going somewhere. It was here, and now it’s there. And now it’s here. And now it’s there. And now it’s here. And it’s walking around in circles.” You just watch it.

As simple as those instructions sound, it’s still going to be very difficult. And you’re going to be likely to get frustrated and want to fight or control your mind. And your mind will stuff to you like: “Oh, I should be thinking about this during meditation” and “Oh, I shouldn’t be feeling that during meditation” and “I shouldn’t be feeling anxious during meditation”.

And what happens there is that your mind is at fight with itself. Your only job is to observe, not to fight with yourself. So, don’t fight. And the way you do this is, you just realize that, when you’re sitting down to meditate for this brief ten, twenty, thirty minutes of your day, you don’t want to take your thoughts within that meditation session seriously at all.

Not just thoughts, but also feelings. Emotions might come up. You might feel angry, or agitated, or jealous, or whatever. Frustrated. And you can do one of two things. You can either buy into those and take them seriously, or you can just watch them. So, your objective here is just simply watch them.

And what’s going to happen is that you will fail at this. You will fail dozens, if not hundreds of times just within a twenty-minute window of your meditation. And what you got to do is not get caught into the trap of beating yourself up for having failed. You just watch yourself getting failed. You see that?

Instead of berating yourself, and telling yourself: “Oh, I screwed up this meditation session”, you just, again, you let your mind go there but you watch your mind go there. Don’t try to control anything in this first stage. Pretty basic. About as basic as it gets.

As simple as this is, you’re going to screw this up. You’re not going to be able to follow these instructions to the letter. Why is that? Well, because your mind is untrained and meditation is a discipline. It’s a practice. It’s something that needs to be done every day.

By the way, just so we get the logistics straight here. When I talk about meditation, to me what that means is — you’re sitting down, in a quiet place. Eyes open, or closed. You have a timer on. And you do, I would say, a minimum of twenty minutes. Try to shoot for twenty minutes. If you want to do more, you can do more. And you have to do this on a daily basis.

Every single day, you have to do this. Alright? So, that’s stage one. After you’ve practiced stage one for a while, and you’ve gotten pretty good at it, or maybe you’re still crappy at it, after a while what you do is move on to stage two. Stage two is, like, the intermediate stage. And this one I call: active detachment.

Active Detachment

So, here what you do is, again, you sit down in your typical meditation pose. And you now actively try to release every thought that comes into your mind. So, it’s just like the first stage, except now you’re actually doing a little bit of manipulation. Something comes up, like: “Oh, shoot, I got that project that’s due tomorrow at school.” Let’s say you get that thought.

What you do is say: “Oh, that’s a thought. Let me just let it go.” And you let it go. And what you get after you let it go successfully, for a few seconds, is — you get a little window of piece. And then what happens is that, usually, another thought comes up. Sometimes immediately. A thought would come up like: “Oh, did I lose my car keys? Where did I put my car keys? I can’t remember where I put my car keys. What if I lost them again?”

So, that thought might come up. And again, you realize: “Oh, that’s just a thought. Let me let it go.” And you detach and release it. And then, immediately, that thought can come up again. So, again you might say: “But my car keys! I really need my car keys! I can’t just let this one go.” Again you have to realize that: “Oh, it’s just another thought. Let me let it go.”

And this is the active release approach. So, a couple of points about this. As simple as these instructions are, you’re going to screw this one up. A lot. Because, what’s going to happen is you’re going to let thoughts go, but thoughts can be sticky and they can creep back up on you.

So, the instruction here is very important. You try to drop the thought, release it. And, if you can’t, for whatever reason, don’t worry about it. Try it again a few seconds later. And if you still can’t release it, don’t worry about it. Try again a few seconds later. The key is that you don’t lose your composure and start to panic, and that you’re able to stay calm throughout this process.

Because notice the soon as you’re frustrated, or you’re panicked, that tells you what? That tells you that you’re taking these thoughts too seriously. Even the thought: “I have to be meditating properly” — you’re taking that too seriously too. So, this whole idea of not taking your thoughts too seriously, this is the entire theme and point of meditation. To make you aware of this.

Now, if you become this anal person, who tries to meditate perfectly all the time, well, counter-intuitively what that does — that backfires on you. Because you’re not taking yourself less seriously. Like you should with meditation. You’re too serious about meditating. So, it’s a little paradoxical there.

So, you’re going to try to release the thought. Often, what I find happens is that your release the thought, and the thought comes back up five seconds later. And what you do then is you get a little bit off your center. And you’re like: “Oh, damn, but I released this thought! If I released it, why is it coming back? I must have screwed up.”

And then you got to recognize: “Oh, what am I doing? I’m just creating more thoughts. Let me release these thoughts too.” And you release those. But then they come back. two minutes later, they come back and you’re like: “Oh, I should’ve released these but I didn’t.”

And so you’re playing these mind games with yourself. You always have to go meta, see what’s happening and then release, alright? And if it fails, don’t worry about it. Try it again. You’ll fail many, many times.

Also, a trick is — don’t resist thoughts arising. Because thoughts will arise. Sometimes, what I tend to do is sit down to meditate, and then I tell myself something like: “Ok, got to not think. Got to not think. No thoughts. No thoughts. Stop thinking. No thoughts.” And its like you’re trying to suppress them from coming up.

It’s kind of like you have a burp that’s about to come up, and then you hold it back. Or you got a sneeze, and you hold that one in. That’s what you’re trying to do with your thoughts. But that doesn’t work so well. Usually, what that does is that is makes you more panicked. And, again, there’s this whole problem of trying to manipulate your way all the time.

So, even though in this stage-two technique you are actively detaching, and that can be viewed as a form of subtle manipulation, it’s not nearly as manipulative as you sitting there trying to prevent thoughts from arising in the first place. That’s going to leave you very frustrated, and it’s going to be counter-productive. Alright, so you got that?

Ok, so that’s basically stage number two. Again, I recommend you do it for twenty minutes every single day, with a timer, as discussed with the other technique. Now lets move on to stage number three. This one I would call the advanced technique. And this one I call awareness focus.

Awareness Focus

So, what you do here is you sit in your typical meditative posture, and you put your awareness on awareness itself. Put your awareness on awareness itself. This is a little tricky. Because, unless you’ve meditated for years, then actually you don’t know what awareness is.

When I use that word — awareness — you kind of know what I’m talking about, but not really. You don’t have a phenomenological, experiential understanding of awareness. And awareness is a very weird phenomenon. Unless you’ve observed it for years, it’s very hard to put your finger on it. What the fuck is awareness? Hard to be sure.

So, here what you’re doing is — you’re kind of working on this problem of understanding what awareness is. And the way that you do that is that you notice that everything that comes up, at any time in your life, but especially when you’re sitting down meditating, is just content that fills this, you might call it — a space of awareness.

The field of awareness is filled with content. An emotion is a piece of content. A thought is a piece of content. An itch on your ass is a piece of content. Your mom or your dad yelling at you while you’re meditating, that’s a piece of content. Your cat coming up and sniffing you or licking you while you’re sitting there, that’s a piece of content. Everything is a piece of content.

Now, usually what we do is we get sucked into this content. And we get sucked into our thought stories and into our emotions. Your job here is just to become aware that all this stuff actually is content and it’s happening within this field of awareness. And that awareness itself is not the content. This is a very freaky thing.

So, one way you can do this is you can sit there, and you can notice that things enter awareness and then they disappear from awareness. So, they arise and then they die. And then they rise again. And then they die again. And this is happening constantly.

But what you need to do is focus your awareness not on the content, but kind of, like you zoom out. And it’s almost like you’re looking at yourself from a third person. Although recognize that, when you sit in meditation, you look at yourself from a third person in your mind’s eye, that — actually — that’s just more content, right? You can’t escape content. Content is always there.

So, what you try to do in this advance stage here is you just focus your awareness on the fact that content is arising. And you try not to get sucked into the content. And you keep your awareness on the fact that you’re aware. And you try to maintain that as consistently as possible without having your mind wander off course.

And, of course, inevitably, it will wander off course. If you first start doing this, you’ll probably be able to do it for five or ten seconds before your mind wanders off course. So, what do you do? Your mind wanders off course — you bring it back. It wanders off course again — you bring it back. It wanders off again — you bring it back. Sometimes, it will wander off, and it will be wandering off in fairy-tale land, lost in content for five whole minutes.

Until you realize: “Oh, shit! I forgot about focusing on my awareness. I’ve been focusing on the content”. And it’s like: “Oh, man, those five minutes were wasted” — more content. “Oh, shit, that’s more content” — more content. “Damn it, I’m not meditating properly!” — more content, right? So, you’re going to be playing these mind games with yourself.

Just bring yourself back as best you can. Sometimes, you’ll have sessions where it’s going to be really hard. And you’re going to be wandering all over the place. And that’s the whole point of meditating. To, again, build in this discipline. And over the weeks and months, as you practice this, you’ll get better and better, and better.

The other thing I recommend that you do is I recommend that you open yourself up to the question of: What is awareness anyways? It’s a very profound question. Perhaps the most profound question who can actually answer in this lifetime.

So, when you’re sitting there and you’re practicing this stage three, start wondering: “What is awareness? I think I know what awareness is, but it’s so hard to put your finger on it. I’ve no clue what awareness is. How could that be? My whole life is constructed out of awareness, and yet I don’t know what awareness is.”

So, just open yourself to wandering. But one warning here is that — don’t try to logically think your way into a logical answer. When you’re meditating, there’s no introspection going on here. There’s no thinking stuff through. This is not therapy. You’re sitting and you’re just observing. You’re not allowed to think about stuff and try to figure stuff out. That’s something different.

So, that’s stage three. Now, let me talk a little bit about some of the common mistakes that I see people making with meditation. And I make all these mistakes myself, so that’s why I’m so familiar with them. So, let’s just run down this list real quick.

The Common Mistakes

The first one is panic and frustration when you realize that you can’t control your thoughts. So, when you first start meditating, you think like: “Well, I got to sit there and, kind of, control my thoughts”. And then, you’re in for a rude awakening when you discover that, actually, you have no control over your thoughts.

So, don’t fall into that trap. Could it be that you actually don’t have control, at all, over your thoughts? Would that be acceptable to you if you discovered that about yourself? Well, leave that possibility open, and see what you think about that question a couple of years after you’ve meditated consistently. For day, after day, after day. For years on end. Then take a look at that answer.

Another pitfall is assuming that meditation should be calm and peaceful. No, no, no, no — no. If you start meditating, and the first few years that you meditate — it’s going to be the exact opposite of that. Meditation’s going to be frustrating and annoying. You’re not just going to be sitting down and blissing out like a yogi.

That happens after decades of meditation and, perhaps, enlightenment. Another mistake is not using a timer. I recommend you get a digital timer. I recommend that you set in for twenty minutes. You don’t look at it while you’re meditating, but you turn it away from you.

I also recommend that you don’t use a smartphone for meditation, as a timer. you can, in a pinch, but I recommend that you don’t. Because your smartphone has all these distractions on it: notifications, and messages, and emails, and texts. So, that doesn’t make your job harder. Get a separate digital timer. They are really cheap these days.

Another common pitfall is trying to stop thoughts completely, which I’ve already addressed. Don’t try to do that. Again, in fact, what you’re going to discover through lots of meditation is that you have no power to stop your thoughts. And that this is not something that’s really even necessary to do for proper meditation.

Another common pitfall is resisting thoughts that arise. So, you’re sitting there, a thought comes up. And you’re like: “Shit! I shouldn’t have had that thought”. You’re resisting it. Stop resisting it, okay?

Another common pitfall is daydreaming. Meditation is not daydreaming. Now, when you do that stage one, that I told you about, it might feel a bit like you’re daydreaming. Because you’re letting your mind wander anywhere. The difference, though, is that in this stage one, yes you’re kind of daydreaming and your thoughts can go literally anywhere, you don’t control them at all — but you’re watching them.

You’re being aware of them. Which is not what a typical daydream is. Typical daydream is: you’re caught in the daydream, in the fantasy of the daydream. Here, you’ll always aware that you’re daydreaming. Or at least you’re trying to be.

Next pitfall is: trying to meditate when you’re tired. A lot of times, what I find in myself is that, you know — I’ve a pretty busy schedule, I run a business. In fact, I run multiple businesses. So, there’s a lot of other stuff that I could be doing in my life besides meditating that are frankly cooler than meditation.

So, what I often do is I try to slot my meditation time somewhere in the day I’m kind of tired, I’m not at my peak of mental clarity. Maybe I’ve just had a big meal. Or I just woke up, and I’m still kind of groggy. Or I’m about to go to bed and I’m kind of sleepy. Or it’s middle of the day, and I’m feeling like taking a nap. But I decide to meditate.

And those usually end up being the worst meditation sessions. Because you’re just not able to focus. You’re not at the peak of your mental clarity. So, the best time in the day to meditate is — whenever you have the highest mental clarity. If that’s morning for you, great, that’s a common one.

For me, personally, in the morning I’m kind of groggy. So, I’m likely to fall asleep in the morning. So, for me, the ideal time to meditate would be sometime in the late morning or early noontime. But I often fail at that, because that’s my prime time that I usually want to allocate on my business. Or shooting a video, or something like that. So, it is important when you meditate.

Here’s another pitfall: not accepting whatever happens in meditation. A really good trick you can try is just, when you sit down right before you start meditating — remind yourself just to accept everything that’s happening right now in the present moment. Literally accept it all.

If you have a toothache, accept that. If your ass is itching, accept that. If you’ve got some problem at work, accept that. If you don’t want to meditate, accept that. If you’re failing to meditate properly, accept that. If it’s a bad time in the day that you chose to meditate, accept that. Accept everything negative that normally you would resist.

And that’s very counter intuitive. Because we feel like: “Oh, well, I don’t want to accept all the bad stuff. Let me just accept the good stuff”. Except, when you do that, you don’t realize that you can’t accept the good without having the bad come back and bite you in the ass. You have to accept it all as a totality. That’s something you’ll learn as you continue meditating deeper.

And perhaps the last pitfall is: trying to get somewhere with meditation. So, you’re sitting down, you’re meditating right in this moment, but then you have this goal. “Well, today I want to release all my thoughts. Today, I want to be perfect” or “I’m working towards enlightenment” or this, or that, or “I want to achieve some super-peaceful state”, right?

You set a certain agenda for your meditation. Stop doing that. Stop trying to get anywhere with your one session. Now, in the big picture, over the long time horizon, I think you should have some goals for your meditation. You should be aiming for enlightenment. And you should be aiming for more peace of mind. And you should be aiming for all this cool stuff that you can get with meditation.

But not when you’re actually sitting down to meditate. Drop all those goals. Because what those goals are going to be are more thoughts that are going to prevent you from being able to actually achieve those goals. So, those goals undermine themselves, alright?

And also, a point I want to make is that you will have bad days when you’re meditating. Some days you’re just going to feel shitty. Some days you’re going to be really tired. Some days you’re going to have a really unruly mind that’s going in ten different directions. And that’s ok. Accept that too. Allow that and be ready for that.

Sometimes what will happen is you’ll have, like, ten straight days of really consistent high-quality meditation. You’re very calm, and focused, and everything is going great. And then, on the eleventh day, your mind is just going nuts all over the place, you can hardly sit still for twenty minutes. Let alone keep your thoughts from wandering in a thousand different directions.

And then you start to doubt yourself, and you start saying to yourself: “Oh, shit, I’m not progressing fast enough, man. I thought I was better than this”. You just got to allow it. Because your mind, every single morning, your mind is in a different place. And different stuff is happening in your life. So, you’re going to feel differently, depending on where you’re at.

Alright, so those are the pitfalls. Make sure that you be mindful of those. Notice them in yourself if you’re making them. Now, let me end by just giving you your meditation schedule. Here’s what I recommend you do with all the stuff that I told you.

The Schedule

I recommend that, basically, you follow my instructions to the letter. And what that means is that you actually re-watch this video for every stage that you’re practicing. So, if you want to practice stage one, re-watch that part. If you want to practice stage two, re-watch that part. If you want to practice stage three, re-watch that part.

And, right before you sit down and meditate, maybe you even want to take some notes on what I said, so that you know exactly what you should be doing. Like you have a little instruction sheet. I found that very, very helpful. Very helpful. Because, otherwise, if you don’t re-center yourself with the instructions, then you’re going to forget them. And you’re going to wander all over the place.

Here’s what I recommend as far as the schedule goes. If you’re starting at the newbie level, stage one — go do stage one for a whole month. Thirty days straight. At twenty minutes a day. Without missing a single day. If you miss a single day, you have to restart that whole cycle from scratch, until you get thirty consecutive days.

After you’ve gotten thirty consecutive days of stage one, then go on to stage two. Make sure you re-read the instructions for stage two, and then you follow that for thirty days, consecutively. Without missing a single day. If you miss a single day, you have to restart that cycle. So, then you complete stage two. Then you move on to stage three.

And you do that one for thirty days, consecutively. Otherwise, you restart the cycle. And that’s it. And then, after those thirty days times three — that’s ninety days — after those ninety days are over, what you can do is return to whatever stage you want. Or perhaps just continue with the most advance stage. Stage three.

Also, at that point, I think that you’re going to be in a nice position to start doing maybe some enlightenment work, which I talk about in other videos. I’m not going to talk about that here. And you can also start experimenting with various other meditation techniques.

What I found helpful, personally, for myself, is that I have to try out a bunch of different techniques just to see what fits me. It’s almost like wearing shoes. You go to the store to buy some new shoes — you got to test out five, ten different pairs before you find some comfortable ones.

And sometimes, you actually got to take them home and wear them for a week before you realize that they are not really that comfortable. So, when you’re spending a whole month on each one of these techniques, I think that’s the best way to go. And that’s what I recommend for you.

And also, what’s nice about setting up this way, in stages, is that you — it’s almost like you set little goals for yourself. Not day-to-day, but month-to-month. And I find that that’s important, because otherwise your habitation habit just gets very stale. You’re always doing the same thing. It’s not exciting.

When you set it up in this stage-like fashion, then you got one month to go, then you’re looking forward to the second month, then you’re looking forward to the third month, and so on, and so forth. So, you want to be switching it up. And also, what it does is that it gets your awareness of how your mind works, and how these techniques work, from multiple perspectives. Which I find, in the end, is very helpful to understanding yourself, because that’s what you’re trying to do here.

Wrap Up

Alright, I want to give a quick credit to Peter Ralston, who I got this idea of “stages” from. Stages of meditation — I think that’s a very powerful idea. But I’m signing off, I’m done here. Go ahead, post me your comments down below. Click the like button, please. Share this video with a friend.

And, finally, come sign up to my newsletter right here, at Actualized.org. It’s a free newsletter. I release new videos and new content every single week. I have cool new projects planned for my subscribers, which I’ll be releasing in the next six to twelve months. So, I’m going to be working actively on that.

But, the reason you want to sign up is because I want to help you to self-actualize. And I think that meditation here is a really powerful topic. And I’m going to be shooting more videos in the future about how to meditate more effectively, and other techniques you can try.

Because this is just a tip of the iceberg, as far as meditation goes, and what you could achieve with meditation. To me, this is the most powerful habit. But beside this habit, there’s a lot of other stuff we need to talk about to help move you towards the kind of powerful, exciting life that you want to create for yourself.

And it all starts with self-mastery. If you can master yourself, specifically this thing up here — the mind — if you can master your psychology, then the world will be your oyster. Sign up and I’ll see you soon.

Good analogy about quitting smoking cigarettes! I have finally quit for good and it took a lot times until finally I am done with the damn things.

I am wondering what Leo thinks about using “meditation music” such as Binaural beats and Isochronic tones among others. I have found them to be helpful personally. I spent 26 days living at a monastery with monks in Chiang Mai Thailand meditating for 12+ hours a day and I found it difficult to enter the deeper states even being at such a peaceful place. When I got back home I started using Binaural beats and Isochronic tones during my sessions and they really have helped me getting into deeper states.

I hope Leo replies to this topic but I doubt it, it seems he replies less and less to the comments on his video posts here and when he does reply it is a very short reply.

If you read his Leo, I am going to give you some advice also my enlightened friend. I have been pretty successful online and paid out millions of dollars with my network marketing company. I say that so you know that I know a little about what I am talking about.

I think you would be doing yourself a favor and the people following you would really engage more if you took the time to reply to the questions asked here on your bog. This is just a suggestion from a “follower” I always did most of my own support in my business online and made a point to be every interactive with my members.

Good stuff either way. I really enjoy most of your videos and I am also on the path to enlightenment no matter how many years it takes or if I fail….

Hey Leo. I am a big fan of your videos and a lot of your wisdom has helped me appreciate life a bit more. Have you considered doing more videos on relationships and how to let go of past relationships?

Hey Leo how are you ? hope everything is good on your side… I have been meditating daily for a few months now without fail just have missed one day but the techniques that you talk about I’ve been doing all these techniques in one 20 min. session, the only thing is that in the first technique when i realize that i’m thinking those thoughts stop then I let go and then i try to be aware …. is it possible to just watch the thoughts even after realizing that your thinking ??? do you recommend that I do those techniques one by one ? I also wanted to know about the positive affirmations three months have passed now , I guess they are embedded in my sub-conscious, till when do I require to continue? These affirmations have helped me a lot that is why I find it difficult to believe that the thoughts have no control over you ….

Im with you on the meditation part. I guess it just requires consistent practice and it will become easier. For the affirmations I think you have to keep doing it forever so you’ll never get complacent. What results have you been getting on affirmations? I’d love to hear about it.

When someone makes a judgement on me automatically a voice in my head says that i am completely independent of the good or bad opinion of others, this helps me be calm in the moment and not care much about what others think which normally i would get upset and angry, whenever i was nervous even though not prepared for my exams just one day before i would say i love to be confident and that would make me study being more calm and relaxed normally i would quit and remain absent for the exam but this helped me face it; even in other situations it has helped me a lot like while talking with girls and strangers …. even dogs don’t bark at me now they just go away when they see my confidence but i don’t know if i have to do it forever … because I want to conquer new things .

I didn’t watch all of your video, but the part I did watch helped me realize something. Lots of gurus I’ve watched online mention that you are the thinker of thoughts, and to go beyond that right. Who is the one thinking the thoughts, etc..

Well, to try to control your thoughts, which you are the thinker of, the source of, its like you are playing a game with yourself. To say I’m going try to control my thoughts when I’m meditate, you create a mechanism (your controller self) to control your thoughts (which is again you). You and your thoughts are not separate. I get that control is not really… Real. Control is a type of resistance, and not being able to control leads to frustrations and panic like you said. Observing and allowing the thoughts like you said, that is where you can begin to sense a real power.

I wanted to explain further what I mean by playing a game with yourself. You need thoughts to be able to control thoughts. So to sit and meditate with the intention to control your thoughts, its like fishing. You get ready, bait your hook and cast your line waiting for the fish to bite, sometimes they do and sometimes you go a whole day and come home with nothing.

Aaah Leo, another great moment of wisdom from you, thank you. In my awareness of thoughts, i observe, let go, and when i’m aware there’s no more thoughts, i relax even more, and i notice, i sink down more, and something starts to happen, my shoulders drop, my jaw drops, and it feels like your mind is in a deep trance, still aware, but there are no thoughts and it feels like your drifting into a higher state of mind, and i am observing this from this level, and when you feel like you dropped all thoughts, it creeps up (the thought) when i let go, i come back into that state of awareness, its beautiful, because the sense is so energizing not to have any activity of mind. Leo, it is so relaxing, when there are no thoughts, i also have an awareness, that i am watching, this “no thought” activity. I keep a watch next to me, when i open my eyes to see the time, not exceeding the 20 min.’s i can still go back to the same state i was in. I love meditation, i really do, and i want to reach a higher state of enlightenment, i have not reached this yet.

Simply brilliant!!!! Solved many of my struggles with consistent practice with meditation and many other goals settingand achievement I have been thinking about. Detach. Total acceptance. Watch your awareness. Don’t suppress your thoughts. Don’t berate yourself constantly. Set a timer. I can be consistent finally given these gems of tips!!!!!
Thank you so much, Leo. I have been since day one!

And a little off this video’s topic question.. you refer to feeling proud as something people should aim for (particularly you said you aim for it in some video where I couldn’t comment on it where you talk about emotions, in your blueprint). It confuses me a little because pride is an emotion that occurs when a subject evaluated that by it’s own action some authority thinks positively of the subject. On the contrary feelings of self-satisfaction, self-respect, self-confidence are in a way emotions people should pursue because that means person does not depend on the authority figures, but lives up to it’s own values (even though s/he finds it pleasurable when an authority figure thinks positively of them). So pride is in a way an emotion a full grown adult shouldn’t really pursue by it’s definition. This is why I don’t understand why you refer to it as something people should put effort in experiencing. It is pleasant though, but not worth it in the long run. So am I missing something or what?

Hi leo
i pratice all your guided mditations and now lm also trying this one which l will pratices for a month on the 1st stage! thank you so so much you are the very best so far and l have been going on the website for years now listening and learning from others too about meditation and spiritual growth, it is now 7yrs l pratice all sorts of stuff! it all started from moment of mine where l suffered alot and saw no meaning to life than l realised l needed really help so it all started by going to the buddhist temple and talking to a lama there for hours as having buddhist in my family , l started learning to meditate and realised that peace one finds only within , so now this l will do till the day l die my spiritual grown, and than for some reason l dont remember how , l fell upon you! and wow! it wasnt hard to listen to your frist vidoes but my god, it was mind blowing so thank you Leo! and lm all for it and going on with it forever and ever even if l never get enlighened l sure as hell going to fight for it what ever it takes, lm going to give it my life time for it! thank you leo and look forward to all your furture videos and will have a look at your books online !
Please do keep your advice going so many of us are counting on you!
Bravo! bravo! merci leo!

I was following your method of the rigorous self inquiry in your episode, How To Become Enlightened.

Previously I was under the very strong sense that I am the perceiver, but somehow that did not make sense since I was aware of that perceiver, this led me to the intense confusion at first. I later concluded that the perceiver is self aware. Which was also not true. It led me to understand that there is another perceiver perceiving the original perceiver. Which could also not be true again since I had awareness of the second perceiver. It led me to believe that there are an infinite number of perceivers of each other and also of perceptions. Which was again wrong.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere I realized, I am Awareness itself. There is no difference between awareness and me. Although I still have a few questions to ask of you.

It was when researching meditation that I found you and your website. I’ve come across the idea that you can ”reprogram your mind” while meditating and other forms where you ”step into the spirit world, to meet your spirit guide or dead pet” and so on. I don’t know what to think really because so far I haven’t experienced any of that. But you do mention that there are different (valid) types of meditation, so my quesiton is what you think of the ones I mentioned?

I feel that breaking the meditation into parts certainly takes the pressure off easier than trying to do everything at once, especially for a newbie like me.

I also find that because now I’m aware and focused on only stage 1 observation that my thoughts/day dreaming etc are occurring for only very short periods instead of dragging on and getting sucked in to the max lol even though I still have plenty of them lol

Like everything, it starts with selfish motives then you see no self. Then you hear the voice of truth. If your closed to the reality of an objective truth, you might hear and respond to your same old deceived self. Listen for the voice of your truth. There is without a doubt, a spiritual helper, or teacher. Call it Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, bobby joe – the label is up to you. But my teacher is most definitely Jesus. If you hear no voice of truth, your not enlightened. Your still resisting something.

I have been trying out the first meditation of observing the thoughts as they arise. The problem i have been running into is that whenever i become aware the thoughts disappear get repressed. As i continue meditating i notice that i start to loose consciousness and thoughts start to rise up but what i think is happening to me is that i get my awareness when my mind tells itself to become aware so its like a thought telling itself to be aware. Does anyone have any suggestion on how to become more aware?

You said that you are practicing stage 1 observing, but at the end you say you want to become more aware, which is stage 3. I’m only a newbie, but I would say stick to stage 1 for as long as possible. Others may have something more practical to contribute

I was wondering, if you could answer my question.
I recently found you on YouTube and immediately I started to watch your videos. I really like them. I want to become better person and learn new things and find my life purpose. So I went to town, to library and bought subscription for one year. Basicly my question is, what kind of books should I read? ( I mean category)

Thanks for answer. I’m 15 y/o from Slovakia, so sorry for any grammar mistakes

Hi Adam,
Go to the ‘books’ tab and there is a video of about 7 books that Leo highly recommends to start with. Below the video there are also a couple more books that he recommends. The rest you will have to pay for to get the list. But worth it
Congrats on starting to work on yourself at such a young age too

Leo thanks so much for this video. You hit the nail on the head. All the things I am confused about during meditating have been addressed by you. However, I have not given up on it and somehow know that the point of it all is to divorce the strong marriage of emotions we have with our thoughts. Thanks again. Peace.

Hey Leo, I must say that I’m a big fan of your videos. I just had a quick question. For meditation newbies such as myself, is it recommended to listen to binaural beats when starting out or are they simply distractions from engaging with just pure silence?

I’ve been doing the first stage for few days now… You are in my head Leo… are you controlling me if my thoughts have no control? Now that I know science also does not have a proper explanation for everything I wanted to ask you one thing… If you don’t exist then no one can die right… Then what happens to the existence that dies? I hope
you understand what i’m trying to say..in short do spirits exist?

My hobby is painting.
Before painting any thing, I feel like I have something inside me; something that wants to go out. I usually fight with; and not let him leaving me, I enjoy living with it sometime, it can more than a month.

For me, this is the time I constantly be alone meditating, trying to develop it, to make it responding nearly to what I want others understand from it.
In this meditating phase the terrible stress I have is the social limitaions. There are many steriotypes.
When from time to time I took the firm decision and I say to my self – hey, try to be what you are, do what you think, face these limitaions- when I do that and after few days or a month sometimes a year my painting comes to light. after that stage I experience a short period looking at this prisoner painting that won’t be seen by anyone.

I began to accommodate your recommondation to my case at the aim to shorten the time I always take to achieve a work.
I’ll make meditation a habit not something I do from time to time following your information, sure L’ll succeed.

Leo has demonstrated great action in favor of the greatest form of generosity in the universe, that of sharing knowledge/wisdom. Those of us who understand and strive in that direction understand and are grateful.
…

In any case, it sounds like you have a great practice going already. Creating art in the present moment, with concentration and attention is a form of purification. It sounds like you have noticed that already — wonderful

I have a local friend who discovered this recently. Although he has been painting for most of his life, he has lately been trying to let go of an intention to create anything specific in the future, but rather just whips out the canvas and lets his hands go with the brush. Now, he truly likes his paintings (they suddenly got damn interesting) and has the option to carry this liberation into other areas of life. Looks like you have already put together the relationship between happiness and your painting. That is awesome!

I meditated each day for 2 months last year and stopped. I recently started again, and immediately on the second day I was on stage three again. Clarity, awareness of the space, a feeling of detachment. I couldn’t move my body, although I could. Strange right? What are your thoughts on this?

I am making a correction from the previous post. My eyes were closed when I meditated. When I had that retaliation I immediately opened my eyes. I have also learned how to limit my breathing and slow down my heart rate during meditation. I believe this is a good thing, am I wrong?

Hi Leo, I am french speaking, so excuse me if it is not proper english.

I have a suggestion which I think It is great for every one :

What about a meditation together …goes this way :

Your beautiful smile at first…little bit explaination….you say we will do that for 20 minutes…and then you hit a tibetain bowl ( what a nice sound that vibrates and help to focus inside ) 20 minutes goes by and then you hit it again. ..smile and that it.

Check out TM (transcendental meditation). In my experience, its way better than this method of meditation. That bliss you’re talking about that you said you get after decades? You get that the first time you try TM. You can get pretty damn deep in just a couple weeks. And its not frustrating, not a chore, and you see results almost immediately. Pretty awesome.

Hello. It’s awesome that you are meditating. I did TM from 1985 – 2009. Now in ’85 I was 11 and unfortunately stricken with worry, anxiety, panic attacks. I used TM with a book I found and endeavored to fix my emotional/personality problems. By the time I entered 7th grade (at 13) I had managed to change my personality from a total worry-wart introvert with constant anxiety and total panic attacks (The reality warping kind that interestingly enough give rise to a total waking no-self……just ask Eckart Tolle) to an outgoing, extroverted, forward speaking guy who can now talk to girls and stop thinking he was dying of every new disease he read about. So TM can do some stuff, yes, if you really get deep with it. However, it seems limited these days, and stuff like Vipassana appeals to my multi tendriled rational mind (can be a big problem on the spiritual path and trying to hold onto and not piss off friends and wife

If every human being had the same exact brain, genetics and life experiences we’d only need one path/technique. But sadly, heh, there’s this diversity…biodiversity. So it’s probably good that there are hundreds of meditation techniques available. Like, if all I knew was TM, I may have quit by now, since I found Tibetan Buddhism right when my TM enthusiasm was finally petering out.

Hello Leo,
I don’t have much experience with meditation, but I wonder… usually when I heard the instructions, they talked about focusing on breath or another object and steadily bringing my attention back to it. Someone even told me, that meditating without an object was dangerous. You seem to leave that out. Why is this?
Thanks a lot, T.

Leo. It was so true that I needed to do this “meditate deeper” program, in spite of the fact that I thought I was quite experienced in Samadhi. So much gratitude – a great booster shot for my mindfulness….it’s getting to be like a wizard’s familiar

I’ve been doing a little thinking here and there, and I’d have to put in my two cents and say that the more mindfulness armor an average human being dons prior to initial stream entry the better…but then, I look at the world and think about even riskier insane things people do for absolutely no reason…

It can happen spontaneously…but I think that isn’t likely in most folks. The body has ways to make that exceedingly hard to i.e. the difficulty of the “path”. Yet..

Hey, that’s great..thank you! Shinzen Young has a very good sound related meditation on one of his YouTube channels as well. I’ve been trying to learn his, “note vanishings” technique, and I zone in on mostly the image/visual field…but naturally the aural/audio sensory domain is full of plenty of “gones” to acknowledge.

One thing that worked for me is to think and visualized to only one dot in my for head, after a while it appears and this shift my mind into focusing the rest of my mind harnessing my thoughts to that point.

Funny thing is that if you master this long enough you can elevate yourself to be aware of surrounding kind of like if you fly above yourself capturing the feelings, sensations, thoughts and awareness of your body within an emptiness.

first time i reach that i thought i was crazy but i also realized that the heart beat rate drop and breathing slow down too.

Quick Question! Can you follow your 3 part meditation program while at the same time under the meditations, listen to an mp3 audio meditation track with stereo headphones, containing different brain wave sounds? Or should you just do the meditation in silence without any headphone audio mp3 tracks?

I actually like the idea of it; until late it starts to happen. Then I find myself desperately clinging on to my ego. When it passes, I then try to get it back and can’t. And am then fond of the idea again. This cycle has been repeating for the past 25 years.

I actually like the idea of it; until it starts to happen. Then I find myself desperately clinging on to my ego. When it passes, I then try to get it back and can’t. And am then fond of the idea again. This cycle has been repeating for the past 25 years.

Hey Leo,
Amazing video as always. But I have one problem with stage number two. I have a meditation pillow, I sit on it every day, have my back as straight as possible. But still I am losing concentration because I feel tired and fall to something you might call: halfsleep. You know you are awaken, but it is like you tilt even if you do not want to and you experience these things that happens before you fall asleep.

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